by Arthur Stone
Ros was blinded by a bright flash. After a few blinks, he realized he could no longer see the guard’s body, or the pole, or the stones. Just the flames, and the burning Leprus figures trying to escape.
“Look out, a boss!” Greedie cried out in a voice that was positively unbearable to hear.
Ros saw three Lepruses jump out of the crater, one of them larger than any he’d seen before. The mage stopped throwing fiery sparks about, and aimed his staff at the monster. The beast froze instantly, with bluish sparkles running across its skin.
“It’s not a boss, you halfwit!” shouted the mage. “It’s just an elite mob, albeit a high-level one. Don’t touch it while it’s asleep. Deal with the others, and then focus all your damage on this one; it should fall quickly enough.”
The gigantic Leprus didn’t so much as twitch or look sideways while the warriors exterminated its kin and the mage used his fireballs to dispatch the mobs approaching from a distance.
“We’re done, Mord!” shouted one of the warriors.
“Get on with it, Sleep will wear off in a second. Cast Stun and other control spells on it, and then deal as much damage as you can, or it will rip you to shreds with its talons!”
The warriors rushed the monster from three sides, and the rest looked much like a meat grinder. They kept hacking and hitting away at the mob while the Leprus just stood there. But then something went awry at some point—the beast came to its senses and knocked one of the armor-clad fighters off his feet.
That was the mob’s only success, though—the forces were too unequal.
Ros thrust his hand forward and cast Soul Trap, using up the required number of magic energy points. He wasn’t sure he’d manage it from this distance, having usually cast it at closer range. But it would be silly to miss a chance like that.
It would likewise be stupid to hope they’d let him search the mob’s corpse for loot. Sure enough, they’d keep the loot for themselves. There was a nuance, however—if the looter wasn’t a necromancer or some other class dealing with raising the dead, they would collect everything but the crystal. In fact, no one would even notice it until a “specialist” came along.
The Leprus crashed down to the ground, and one of the warriors finished it off with a blow of his two-handed sword, exhaling sharply. Then the party turned around to face the road and stood still.
“Your Intellect grows by 1. Current Intellect value: 3.”
What could this mean? Was it a result of the successful use of his skill, growing drastically due to the high level of the mob it had hit? He badly wanted it to be true.
“No mana left!” the mage shouted. “Let’s stay put and wait for reinforcements!”
“I’ll loot the mobs in the meantime,” said one of the warriors.
“Only the ones closest to us,” the mage ordered. “We don’t know how many more of these bastards may be coming, and I’m out of mana.”
Ros figured out that “mana” was the mage’s way of referring to magic energy points. He was well familiar with the pauses caused by the blue bar reaching zero. The tall guy didn’t want to enter the crater without his fiery weapon—no one knew how many mobs there might be down there.
Another party approached, somewhat more numerous. There were two tall warriors, a dwarf wearing the same kind of armor scurrying along, a fragile-looking orc clad in a ridiculous garish costume and wearing a feather headdress, and two slender young ladies looking very appealing in their skintight leather outfits with sophisticated-looking bows in their hands.
The dwarf shouted from a distance, “Mord! What’s all the commotion?”
“The Lepruses have gone berserk! Their entire population crawled out of the mine. They destroyed half the settlement, as well as these nitwits—even Greedie got the axe!”
“Greedie got offed by noob mobs? Har har har!”
“Well, they weren’t as noobish as you might think—and there were plenty of them. Good thing he’d managed to activate the alarm in the nick of time.”
“Judging by the fires, the Lepruses weren’t the ones who destroyed the settlement.”
“It got so hot here, I couldn’t afford to pick my targets. Just look at all these dead mobs.”
“What’s this weird business with the Lepruses? I’ve never heard of them behaving this way.”
“They killed one of our workers yesterday,” Greedie butted in. “Yesterday evening.”
“There’s no order here—that’s why the mobs run wild! Let’s run through the settlement and see whether there are any of them hiding anywhere. How are you doing, Mord?”
“All used up—I need a break to recover.”
“Stay put, we’ll loot the mobs in the meantime. Tardle and Onkins, guard the gate. No one comes in, no one gets out. We’ll go down there and bury the entrance to the mine they had crawled out of.”
“And how are we supposed to harvest copper afterwards?” Greedie countered, enraged.
“Don’t get all worked up, you’ll have your copper. We’ll trigger a rockfall at some distance from the entrance—there’ll be plenty of galleries left for you to work in.”
“Burying the entrance won’t gain you anything. This whole mountain is like a piece of cheese—there are holes everywhere. They have hundreds of exits, and we have no idea where many of them are, but the mobs know it for sure.”
“What is your alternative?”
“Just take a stroll down the main tunnel and give a good fright to whatever you find down there. Those that survive won’t forget anytime soon that messing with us is bad for their health. The entire population of the Lepruses must have crawled out of the mines—if we destroy them all, it will be a while until we hear from them again. It would also be nice to get more guards down here—reinforcing the garrison for at least a week would be a great idea.”
“All right, I’ll find you two or three penalized players. But remember, you mind the mine, and you’re personally responsible for its output. If we fail to meet our customers’ demands, it will be your ass. So ponder this well: are you sure you don’t want the main tunnel buried?”
“I am sure. I know these mines better than you. It’s pointless. Do you know the creek down there?”
“So?”
“Do you remember Tandor?”
“He isn’t easy to forget.”
“He used to get up to all kinds of tomfoolery back when he worked here as a guard. One time he collected a bunch of empty vials and tossed them into the creek, each with a coin inside—he didn’t mind wasting his money like that—and a note saying, ‘Please report where you find this vial, and here’s a little something for your trouble.’ He got kicked out of the clan a while ago, but we got a letter with one of his notes delivered to the mines only recently, saying that the vial was found on the banks of Tythiga—near Sakash, no less.”
“How the hell did it wind up there?”
“I’m telling you, this whole mountain is full of holes. If you fall into the creek, you can find yourself carried all the way to the foothills of the Devil’s Fingers.”
“Mm-hmm. Then I suggest you watch that this worm-riddled mountain doesn’t swallow you up, the village and all.”
Ros waited patiently for the warriors to finish their looting and split. When the main party descended into the crater, leaving a few people at the gate, he slipped out into the street, approached the corpse of the Leprus cautiously, and touched its chopped-up head gingerly, all the while praying to himself, “Come on! Come on!” Today was his lucky day! Today he was bound to succeed!
“Soul Crystal. Trapped creature: Wild Leprus.”
Chapter 13
What surprised Ros in the morning was the unusually high number of miners present. Normally, it would be hard to find someone in the settlement apart from Greedie and the guards, but today there were dozens of miners wandering to and fro. He ran into Pup as he was leaving the mess hall, and asked him, surprised:
“What are you doing here? Don’t you spend your nig
hts down in the mine?”
“Haven’t you heard anything at all?”
“I have. The mobs attacked the settlement, and the warriors gave them a good fright in the night. Two of the houses over there are still smoldering.”
“Well, these mobs had some fun underground, too—it wasn’t just the village. They went through all of the closest galleries and sent everyone to their graves. The bastards also left nothing but rags of my clothes.”
“I saw it happen. You kept materializing in the circle, and they’d kill you instantly. They kept repeating the process over and over again.”
“Yeah, I must have died a dozen times or more. I haven’t lost any stats since I still have noob levels, but my clothes sure suffered, and they were much better than what’s issued here. What on earth are you chewing without even sitting down for it? Do you really enjoy this sludge?”
“I’m hungry like a horse. That bastard Greedie said I’d get no supper if I fail to deliver on the quota, and I didn’t feel like escalating the conflict.”
“That’s OK—he’s already had his comeuppance. He spent the night running around in his long johns.”
“Why the long johns?”
“Have you seen his name, as well as those of the local guards?”
“So?”
“Ever noticed they were usually red?”
“So what does that mean?”
“A player’s name is dyed red if they kill other players outside warzones, without such excuses as them being blacklisted or belonging to an enemy clan. This happens if you have a penchant for offing neutrals or clanless players. The victim also has to provide no resistance. Get it?”
“Do they tie them up before they kill them in order to make their names red?”
“It’s much simpler than that. Greedie is level fifty or so, I gather. So he must be involved in killing players with level growth locked at thirty—no higher than that, most likely. Such noobs often fail to respond in kind.”
“Whatever for?”
“It’s a noob clan, so they’re involved in all sorts of noob affairs. Some of those affairs are pretty suspicious—I don’t think they draw a line at anything. And murky affairs require special people be used. So this is where they keep them, away from where most people live. Whenever there’s a need to slice someone’s throat, they send them into action. They may even oust them from the clan temporarily so as to avoid any incriminating association. Once the deed is done, they get back here and lie low until their names go white again. If you don’t get involved in any violent stuff, it takes a week or two for it to almost regain its color. Don’t ask me who they deal with to make them red—I’ve never been involved in any affairs with the Swords, so there’s no way for me to know.”
“Why the long johns, though?”
“It’s all related. A player with a white name has a very low chance of losing an equipped or inventoried item—one or two percent maximum. That is, if they never PK’d anyone.”
“PK’d?”
“It stands for Player Kill. PK’ing affect your karma negatively, raising that chance, though it should still remain relatively low. If your name is red, however, you start dropping stuff like you’re Santa’s bag with a hole in it. Only a very few items are loss-proof, and they’re very rare—most often, epic and legendary items, and parts of sets. Another thing that you cannot lose is your underwear. It always stays with you, and no one can remove it without your consent. Also, it can only be done in a room that you own or rent, or in a location free of any third parties. This is necessary on account of some of the players being minors, and so on. So, it’s censorship of a sort. To be seen in your long johns is something associated with total noobs who end up owning nothing. And now Greedie got exposed for what he is… Which must be pretty embarrassing for him.”
“So he got killed by mobs and ended up without any stuff?”
“They must have killed him a couple of times, chasing him all over the settlement before reinforcements arrived. Someone had enough wits left to sound the alarm, sending for the clan’s cavalry, but until they arrived Greedie was getting hammered like the greenest of noobs. And ended up losing everything. He eventually got his belongings back, but people have already seen it, and that’s a sight they’re not likely to forget.”
“They suggested to bury the entrance to the mines—not all of them, just the far galleries. But Greedie talked him out of it.”
“He was perfectly right in that.”
“What if the Lepruses try something again?”
“Mobs used to respawn real quick in the old days, but now it takes them a lot longer. There must be next to none left after the night’s battle. Even if they caused a few rockfalls, they’d no longer be blocking the tunnels by the time new mobs turn up, so there wouldn’t be any use for them.”
“No longer blocking the tunnels? How does that work?”
“Just like that. The mine was built by expert crafters with high Mining & Quarrying stats, Construction, and something else—I’m not entirely sure. They made the crater, then bored the tunnel at the center and made galleries leading away from it. Then architect mages who specialize in that sort of thing cast a protective spell over the whole construction. The protection was cheap—the noob clan couldn’t afford anything better. This is why we have plenty of rockfalls. But there’s still some protection against them, even if it’s noob-grade. So they dissolve completely after a while. The tunnels regenerate, as it were.”
“Like ore?”
“Ore is much trickier. This mountain has a certain amount of copper deposits that regenerate slowly. If you mine faster than they regenerate, the miners will stop finding ore, so there has to be a balance between the number of workers and a mine’s properties. The richer the deposit, the higher the regeneration rate—that’s the usual rule. Rich deposits are usually contested by top clans, but they can’t be bothered with the likes of Ravenas, which is why the Swords have managed to claim it as their own. Listen, I suggest we get going—we’re just standing here like two idiots, and there’s work to be done. Have a look over there—everyone’s going in already, the warriors have come out. They must have given the mobs below a good thrashing, so there may be no rats left for you.”
“Well, in that case I’ll just harvest ore like everybody else. I gotta fulfill my quota ASAP, or I’ll starve.”
“You should be able to produce between one hundred fifty and two hundred lumps per shift even with your skewed stats, so don’t worry too much. Best of all, cook your own food. Then you’ll have no need to come up at all.”
“How do you do that?”
“You mean you don’t even know that?!”
“How would I know?”
“Read the forum and the guides. That always comes in handy.”
“Trust me, Pup, I have no time for forums right now.”
“You’re one weird noob… Anyway, I keep my nose out of other people’s business. You kill rats, don’t you?”
Ros decided against telling the dwarf about the slain Leprus—the last thing he wanted was someone shrewd enough to link it to the mob attack.
“Sure, I kill a few of them every day.”
“Once you skin the rat, or peel off the shreds, as the case may be, you can cut away pieces of meat—just treat it like a regular carcass. Then you can bake it, pan-fry it, or roast it over a fire. You get the idea.”
“You suggest that I eat rat meat?”
“What do you think they feed you in the mess hall?”
“Come again?”
“Do you think the gunk they serve there has fresh sturgeon in it?”
“Well, it doesn’t taste like rat meat…”
“What you get is all sorts of crap—rat meat is by no means the worst. It’s good meat if you cook it right and don’t mix it with all sorts of cattle feed like they do when they cook in the mess hall. See the furnaces below where they smelt the ore? You can use them for cooking, too. You’ll get a bonus, too—food, especially goo
d food, restores hit points. So you can carry pieces of roast meat in your bag. If you’re low on HP after a battle, you can have a snack to restore your health. It replenishes your Vigor, too. Food works once an hour, just like water. Not the same as an elixir, of course, but noobs like us can’t be choosers.”
“I had no idea.”
“Now you do.”
“But I don’t even have a knife to dress the carcass.”
“Here you go,” the dwarf handed him a short knife with a wooden handle.
“Small Knife. Versatile tool and a bladed weapon. Damage: 1-2. Requirements: none. Weight: 0.14 kg. Durability: 7/10”
